dirt ball. let's play "hardball." ♪ good even. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start with this. can you smell it? it's the ugliness of this campaign. heading into the last week the romney campaign against president obama carries the scent of hell. john sununu, the top romney surrogate, barks at that lazy one in the white house who doesn't know how to be an american, who sarah palin mocks for shucking and jiving, and donald trump accuses again and again and again of being from kenya and playing monkey business with the country's economic numbers. you know, the same fellow romney says cheats on the welfare checks to feed his political base. the guy again rich calls the food stamp president. listen to sununu last night yelling at former governor bill richardson to shut up saying, general colin powell's political judgment is based on racial bias.

trump offering a big bet the president won't show his student transcripts all to diminish the president's academic rise to editor of the harvard law review. yes, it's all directed at drumming up the blue collar white vote for the republican ticket and, yes, it smells. david corn is author of "the 47 percent" and roy reid is managing editor of the grio. both are msnbc political analysts. if the romney campaign is really winning, you have to ask, then you wouldn't think they'd be acting like this. take a look at romney campaign co-chair and former new hampshire governor john sununu last night on cnn and fox. >> when you take a look at colin powell, tough wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring president obama. >> what reason would that be? >> well, i think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the united states, i applaud colin for standing with him. he supported a bankruptcy and

eventual support from the federal government after the bankruptcy. but the important thing is that's the past. >> that's the moving target that colin powell talks about. that's his last position, john. you can't -- you shouldn't have brought that up, john. that was a bad thing to bring up. >> hey, bill, why don't you shut up for a minute and let me tell you facts. >> this president wants to bring the country together. he wants to bring the country together. >> by saying that mitt romney's a bser? >> he's created more racial division than any administration in history. >> oh, come on. come on. >> oh, come on. let me go to joy on this thing. i know i pushed this point but every day it becomes truer. every day you see the thread collected, the language urser used, the way they talk about the president, not as a democrat, not as a liberal, not as someone they disagree with, but someone about whom the very person is wrong for the office somehow. what do you think they're talking about? endlessly. >> exactly. and this is about over and over again tweaking the archie bunker

crowd. this is about that angry guy, we all known him in the neighborhood, because, look, if this was just about barack obama or his policies, colin powell wouldn't magically get sucked into it, too. we wouldn't be hearing sarah palin talking about shucking and jiving. how much more obvious do they have to be? this is about trying to run up romney's numbers among low information blue collar white voters, particularly older white voters who are already uncomfortable with the idea of this guy being in the white house. not a democrat being in the white house, this democrat. this president. the person of barack obama is what is offensive to old cranks like john sununu who, by the way, hasn't had an intelligent thought since the reagan administration. why is he the top surrogate for mitt romney? because he speaks to that guy, archie bunker. >> you know, i have to think that all this stuff i grew up with watching it from the south mainly, but some were from rizzo and philadelphia, ben tillman and george wallace and, you know, all those characters down there used to do it, but now it's the sophisticated guys,

governors of big states. rich guy in new york tromp. all over the place they keep going this. >> what we see is a continue wum. it goes all the way from the birtherism as we talked about a way to define barack obama because he either has the wrong ideas or because he's black, whatever it might be, to the idea he doesn't understand america. you know, mitt romney has said again and again he doesn't get america, probably will play sununu saying earlier a few months ago, listen, i wish this guy with learn how to be an american. all the way, it's all about saying he's not one of us, and people can read that all sorts of different ways. if you want to see it racially because in archie bunker type like joy just said, then you get that message that way. if you want to read it because you think he's a socialist and you don't like socialistings and it has nothing to do with race, you can see it that way, too. it's really sophisticated. not a dog whistle, sort of an orchestra that plays to a wide audience with different instruments. >> chris, i'm sorry, i kind of

disagree, this isn't sophisticated. these people can't define socialist. they don't know what it means. i think it's very much ethnic and i don't think these people are sophisticated at all. this is a blunt, loud dog whistle. >> we had a woman waiting on the rope line and she was yelling communist. i kept asking what do you mean by that? she didn't have any notion what it meant. it meant she didn't like the look of that guy, whatever. mi midnight the romney campaign released a statement from sununu. isn't it interesting how they do this and talk about orchestration. colin powell is a friend. i like the way they say this in washington. a friend of whose? i respect the endorsement decision he made and i do not doubted it was base on anything but his support of the president's policies. peers morgan's question was whether colin powell should leave the party and i don't think he should. let me get back to this. this is orchestrated. listen to some of the stuff he said in the past. sununu had some inflammatory things throughout the campaign. listen to a press conference call back in july.

>> the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea how the american economy functions. the men and women all over america who have work ed hard t build these businesses, their businesses from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. it is the american way, and i wish this president would learn how to be an american. >> i wish he'd learn how to be an american. they always kick that as the kicker, you're right, joy. isn't good enough to disagree with his policies. he ain't an american. here is sununu one more bit of this stuff. here is an interview with andrea mitchell, who i know was taken aback when she heard these words. >> what people saw last night i think was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are. he's lazy and disengaged. >> lazy. i don't know how many more dog

whistles or trumpl pets you need to play. it's lazy, the food stamp guy. you know what? this isn't sophisticated because it does play on ideology only in the sense that ideology words are bad words. >> these are the same guys that opposed busing in boston. these are the same guys that call african-americans in general lazy. there's just something wrong with them. it's the same dog whistle you hear over and over and it's a particularly rich dog whistle to be blown by john sununu who himself is a naturalized american, born in havana, either of his parents are american. barack obama has more roots in the united states of america than john sununu does. >> by the way, one of the great ironies of our lives living in america, this country means so much to me, our history is so rich and ironic. african-americans were here for 250 years working for nothing. >> long before some of us came. >> i'm not asking for reparations necessarily, but i have to tell you something, they're there, they were here long before most of us. let me go to this point here

about the people speak for romney when he doesn't want to do it. they used to say mickey cohen, the gangster, said if you have a dog, you don't have to bark. look at all these dogs he has out there. trumpy, amazely successful guy, downtown business developer in a batman movie. he's incredibly big shot so a lot of little guys out there, this makes i think joy's point. a lot of little guys out there, that big shot says he's from kenya, must be something there. really. and then he goes after him and says the unemployment number which helped the president a week or so ago -- may not help him this we can. criticikrit sarah palin headlin column obama's shuck and jive ends with benghazi live. trump offered money if the president would turn over college records. let's catch his wording though. >> do you think they changed the

numbers? >> i do. i do. and i think that they did -- there was a lot of monkey business. >> sucking up to him is really sickening. sure, talk to him about housing development, talk to him about downtown development. he's a genius ask it. don't ask him his political views because he gets back into monkey business and he's from kenya. >> my overarching point is these guys, not saying they're sophisticated, i think that is crass, but what they managed to do is take these racial arguments and attacks but also make them into something that he's not just -- not just that he's black but he's foreign. that he's european, he's socialistic, he's not one of us, he doesn't understand. when things go wrong in benghazi, he's apologizing -- >> if he was home grown all the way, what would you think if his name was joe brown, a regular name? would they be treating him any better? maybe go at him a different way. jo just a different way.

>> they went after 3wk9 in a different way. it was particular to his character and his life story and they said he was a hippie, said he was manchurian candidate. >> a murderer. they called him a murderer. >> but this guy -- >> he's not an american. keep coming back to he's not an american. >> let's go back to the candidate on the other side. there's two candidates running for president. thank good trump isn't one. thank good sununu is not one. romney and obama. romney has had adequate opportunity throughout this campaign to come out and say i will not put up with this, nobody who speaks for me shall talk like this anymore. i don't want trump on my side. remember that jen flexion out in vegas. sununu is designated as his co-chair. we just saw when he did his correction it came out of the romney headquarters. this is orchestrated. >> exactly. >> i keep waiting, it's way too late -- >> you're not going to see it. >> sister souljah moment or anything like that -- >> it will never happen. >> like the great john mccain on this point, when he pushed back and said, no, that's not true. >> i have been waiting this

whole campaign, we've talked about this earlier, for mitt romney to show one inch of spine -- >> how about shame? >> shame or spine, whatever. there's not a single courageous statement or move he's made as a politician that i can discern, unlike his dad. he's the opposite of his dad who took gutsy positions, even at political cost, again and again and again. >> let me ask you, here is an election night scene. romney with sununu, his co-chair, donald trump, all up there on the platform together thanking everybody for a generous support, ignoring all the dog whistles, the horrible smell of this campaign as if it never happened. >> as if it never happened. but this is a guy who didn't even have the courage to stand up to the racism in his own church. when he was not just a member, he was a bishop. mitt romney has never shown moral courage. if you look at his history in his career when he was confronted with the lack of minorities and women at bain capital where he was the boss, he said, oh, minorities and women don't want to work in private equity, they just don't

like it. the idea that -- >> i think we separate there. we separate there. i don't want to get into anybody's religion. >> but i mean the point is not his religion. it's not his religion. it's him not standing up to it. it's him not standing up to it. he was a bishop. he's not stood up to it. so the point being -- >> listen, you were moved by the great civil rights movement. i wasn't quite old enough to be, but -- >> but i want to correct myself. george romney cared about civil rights. a lot of mormons care about civil rights despite whatever the theology was. >> mitt romney never seemed to be engaged by that while being a member of a church that practiced racism. that's just a known fact. >> let me thank you all tonight. different versions of the dream here at "hardball." thank you, david corn and thank you joy arn reid. coming up, one candidate is playing the role of incumbent avouzing interviews and contact with the media. the other is acting like the underdoing criss-crossing the country doing a blitz of television. here is the surprise, the roles are in reverse.

governor romney is acting like an incumbent like dick nixon and obama is acting like the challenger, what's behind both strategies. while everyone was paying attention to the presidential race, the democrats have significantly improved their chances of holding control of the u.s. senate when the democrats were supposed to be on the defensive. see if you can recognize these voices from nbc's 1980 election coverage. >> now solid blue practically all the way from the mississippi river westward leaving only oregon, washington, and arkansas as you can see. >> beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool over there. >> a suburban swimming pool, that was tom brokaw and then david brinkley announcing ronald reagan's landslide election when we called republicans blue. there's a new ebook coming out with video going back to 1940. we'll have that on tonight. let me finish with this campaign that's really starting to smell. this is "hardball," the place for politics. inside the v8 tast. tomato, obviously.

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some breaking news. senate majority leader harry reid has been taken to the hospital after a car accident on a las vegas freeway. police say reid's car was one of the six in a chain reaction crash including two las vegas police vehicles and two capitol police vehicles. a staff member says senator reid is stable and, quote, doing fine. we'll have more as we learn it.

welcome back to "hardball." in the closing days of the campaign, the two candidates for president are pursuing very different strategiestrategies. on the one hand president obama has gone a virtual media blitz speaking to various radio shows, rolling stone magazine, as well as tv interviews with seven affiliates just today and sit-downs with jay leno, brian williams, and mtv. in contrast, the romney campaign says the candidate has no plans for additional interviews before the election. he will apparently stick to giving speeches like he did today. in fact, billed as a major policy speech, romney offered no

new policies nor did he geoff any explanation for how he will implement some of his more math mt.ically challenged promises like capping federal spending at 20% of the gdp. paul krugman wrote m romney's plan is a sham. it's a list of things he claims will happen with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen. if you refuse to let the media ask you questions, you never have to worry about giving them answers. joan walsh is author of what's the matter with white people and john brinkley is editor of "rolling stone." douglas, this whole idea of a president, it clicks with me as sort of the dewey campaign of 1948 where the guy basically -- as manchester wrote "the gory and the dream" he had every means of communication to say anything he wanted and he had

nothing to say. also the nixon campaign of '68 where he hunkered down with his big lead and said absolutely nothing, including no interviews. >> i was thinking of '68 today. look, you remember when brian williams did that interview during the london olympics of mitt romney and it was a disaster. he almost got thrown out of the uk, and at that time charles kraut himer wrote a recommendation to mitt romney which was zip it, be quiet, you can only do damage to yourself in these interviews. it's not the art form that mitt romney is good at. barack obama is fa sil and quick-witted, can be funny and can get into policy depth. mitt romney is quite shallow in some ways, and he's better off probably running the ads he's doing than going on the talk show circuit. >> joan, tough interview people all the time. it seems to me he doesn't think he has to do it because it's below him to answer questions and i think as a business guy, a tycoon really, he can talk to anybody he wants to or not talk to anybody. that's the difference between the political press and the business press. >> yeah. he's not used to it.

it's like he's running a rose garden strategy but he doesn't live in the rose garden yet and no one has told him, chris. doug is absolutely right. he's not good on his feet. his last few interviews have been aces a ters. he was terrible with david gregory. when paul ryan sat down with chris wallace, he was hammered on the absence of details in their plans. romney couldn't even handle bret bear from fox. they can't even go to fox when they go on fox nobody blows fox who is a republican except these two guys. so i think it's the prevent defense except he's not sitting on a lead. but he's behind in most of the swing states. he's behind in ohio, wisconsin, iowa, nevada. you know, i'm not sure this is so safe, but it's probably the safest course for him. >> well, i think bret bear is pretty good in that interview. one reason romney might steer clear of sit-down interviews, he's been barraged with questions about senate candidate

richard mourdock. take a look. >> governor, do you wish mourdock would pull that ad? >> which way are we going? >> governor, do you disavow mourdock's comments on the rape? >> thank you. >> governor, do you disavow murdoch's comments on the rape? >> what do you make of that, doug? of it seems to me that he has that wonderful immutability to just say i'm turning on the mute button, i'm not saying nothing, live with it. >> he's been taking a lot of pages from ronald reagan. remember when reagan would walk in and he couldn't hear, would have to cup his ear and wouldn't answer questions. in the third debate we saw a lot of reagan in mitt romney in the since of talking about peace and being genial. this is a candidate now who realizes if he gets loose on a talk show, they're going to ask him about his taxes, they're going to ask him about bain capital, and those issues have somehow died. you don't hear the press talking about it much.

so i think they see it's just a sea filled with land mines if romney gets out there and tries to freelance q&as. >> isn't this an assault -- an implicit critique of our democracy? i do think we americans don't think long term. we're great at crises, not good at long-term think being the debt and immigration having serious policies for way down the road, but it also says something about the lectelector. they don't seem to say this guy has a tax question, why is he hiding the tax returns? or this guy doesn't have numbers that add up. look at that $5 trillion in cuts he's going to give us but doesn't say how he's going to pay for it with eliminating deductions and how will he pay for the extra $2 trillion for defense? where is this money coming from? this is two weeks and people don't remember two weeks ago. how do they remember american history and what kind of president they're picking? just a that you. >> it's a problem, you're right, but people are business and part of it is our job and i don't know that our colleagues are doing the best job. obviously if we can't get to him

it's hard to ask him about his taxes but people could be talking more about taxes. it's kind of like he stone walled us and i guess i'm going to say i was wrong when i said months ago. he's going to have to tell us, he's going to have to tell us. he hasn't had to tell us. i don't know that he will have to tell news the next 11 days. some of it is the immediate why gets distracted by he does a decent job of handling us. we spent the days after this awful last debate where he lied, you don't like it when i use that word but you let me anyway, when he dissembled and he said he was just like president obama on issues of war and peace when he's not. the media -- everybody praised him. they were like it was very savvy for him to move to the center and emulate president obama because the public is very tired of war. wait, savvy? we're impressed by savvy? we're not going out and saying, wow, that was a remarkable display of dissembling. what does this man really believe? it's all about the horse race. >> as the extremely literary like to say, to wit, today in his policy speech, romney made some dubious statements about medicare and health care. let's watch him in action. this is how you do it, joan.

this is how this guy does it. >> we'll save medicare and social security both for current and near retirees and for the generation to come. we'll reform health care to tame its growth and the cost that's been going skyrocketing to provide for those with pre-existing conditions as well and to assure that every american has access to health care. >> we'll tame its growth, douglas. tough love for obama care. we're not going to eliminate it or starve it to death, we're going to give it tough love, we're going to tame it and keep the good features like pre-existing condition coverage. he can get away with murder if nobody is interviewing him. who is to stop him? >> that's the absolute strategy. he's able to claim everything. i had mentioned he's like a chameleon on playeid. i can be whatever he wants to with whatever crowd he's in. there's nobody to call him out. i think the short attention span is the problem. i thought when osama bin laden was killed it was such a defining moment for our country but that was in the spring and

you don't feel it resonating in this election. people questioning libya because it was much more recent. it's very hard for a sitting president to get his kudos from things he did in the last couple years when people are just on last week's news cycle and mitt romney's not feeding the beast. he's refusing to feed the media beast in his mind any bit of raw meat. >> as you wrote in your "rolling stone" piece, doug, president obama used some rather saucy language to talk about romney. he said, quote, you know, kids have instincts. they look at the other guy and they say, well, that's a bser i can tell. we don't use the word here of course, this is television. did he say that in passing? >> it was after we left the oval office in passing, just doing a little bit of small talk. i found it just part of the rhythm of what we were doing. it was laughing a little bit. i didn't take it very seriously. you know -- >> he doesn't like romney too much, does he? >> doesn't care for romney. but that bs word is used by

every single -- 99% of america uses it and i think it came from the heart. he was telling a little bit of a joke. >> i think it must be amazing to sit there like he's had to in these debates and listen to the other guy go 180 on everything he's been saying to get the nomination like he went 180 on everything to get to be governor of massachusetts. thank you doug and joan. how long would it take to you watch all the ads the obama and romney campaigns have run? just in ohio alone? this is "hardball," the place for politics. i'm so g

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back to "hardball." now to the "sideshow." nancy pelosi was on "the daily sh show" last not with her own spin on romnesia.

pelosi brought up the failed personhood amendment in mississippi. >> governor romney had endorsed personhood amendment in mississippi. >> no, i remember that. >> even the people of mississippi rejected that position. >> well, romney also rejected that position as well. >> well, the president calls it romnesia. i have my own what i call mittology. >> anyway, also take on the late night comedy scene, first lady michelle obama. she and jimmy kimmel put together an ad to get you out of bed on election day. >> election day, election day! up and adam. up and adam! it's election day. come on, let's go. get your shoes on. up, up, up! >> all right. oak. >> time to vote. >> uk do it. >> okay. i'm voting. >> out the door, out the door! and eat some carrots. >> i'm barack obama and i approve this message.

>> also ms. obama has been encouraging people to take advantage of early voting just in case, her words here, your toilet overflows and you can't get to the polls. and the lead writer in the series "girls" steps up with a new ad encouraging young people to vote. >> your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. you want to do it with a great guy. you don't want a guy who says, oh, hey, i'm at the library studying when he's really out not signing the lily bed letter act or who thinks gay people shouldn't have beautiful complicated weddings. super uncool to be out and about and says did you vote, no, i wasn't ready. my first time voting was amazing. i voted for barack obama. >> well, the ad is facing backlash in conservative circles for being too risque bu but

they're not the target audience. both campaigns are putting a lot of time and resources into the state of ohio. it could be the make or break state. anyone living in ohio knows it, too, thanks to the onslaught of campaign ads dominating their tv screens. recently actually. how many days would it take to watch all the presidential 5ds that have aired in ohio the last month. according to bloomberg news and cantor media, that would be 80 days straight, 24/7. we're talking nonstop 80 days presidential ads have aired over 58,000 times in ohio over the past month. how do they stand it? up next democrats ever well-positioned to keep control of the u.s. senate. we'll look at how they're doing it. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. . here's one story. i'm sean. i switched to advil® 10 months ago. biking can be really tough on the lower back and your upper thighs. you have some nasty aches and pains. i really like advil® because it takes care of it all. neck ache, shoulder pain and definitely lower back pain. i use advil® because my wife,

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i'm julia boorstin with your

cnbc mooshth wrap. the dow adds 3, the s&p falls 1 and the nasdaq is up 1 point. the economy grew at a 2% annual rate in the third quarter thanks to rising consumer spending. it's the last read on the growth until after the election. consumer sentiment rose to a five-year high as americans grew more optimistic about the economy and their finances. and on the earnings front, merck shares ended slightly lower after reporting results that beat estimates. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." ♪ welcome back to "hardball." nearly as important as the race for president are the races that will determine control of the united states. democrats control the senate effectively 53-47. jennifer duffy of the cook political report puts the chances of republicans gaining the seats they need to take control at 40 to 45%, a number

that's diminished over the year. let's take a look at the maps. these are democratic seats that could go republican. montana, north dakota, nebraska which is a near certain gop pickup, wisconsin, virginia, and connecticut. and these are the republican seats that could go democratic, nevada, arizona, indiana, and massachusetts. and then there's maine where independent candidate angus king is expected to win and become effectively a democrat in the senate. we'll zero in on three of those states tonight and they're crucial. with former south dakota senator larry pressler, a republican now supporting president obama in this race and lightning maror antonio villaraigosa who is the obama 2012 national co-chair. gentlemen, thank you. massachusetts, the marquee senate race where all the money is going. elizabeth warren is actually leading the very -- well, once popular senator scott brown up about 3.5 points according to

"the huffington post." this is a hard fought race with both candidates appealing to the women's vote. let's look at parts of their recent ads. first, from elizabeth warren. >> all you have to do is look at his voting record. >> he had one chance to confirm a supreme court justice to uphold roe versus wade. he voted no. >> i'm very disappointed. >> the brown campaign hit back with an ad featuring his wife. >> i'm gail huff. i want to talk to you about those untrue ads attacking my husband, scott brown. it's sad that elizabeth warren and her supporters are avoiding the issues like jobs and the economy. i want to set the record straight. scott brown is pro-choice. >> the question is, does he vote for pro-choice judges who desight this thing. >> that's the question. you notice she didn't speak to that in that commercial. >> what's moving up there, the mayor? >> the mayor has a great get out the vote operation and eats got a lot of credibility in boston and he's certainly working hard on her behalf, and it's going to

be a very close election, but i expect that she's going to win, elizabeth warren is going to prevail. >> senator, it's interesting. you tend to be a moderate, middle of the roader. scott brown may be the last of the middle of the roaders left of necessity. >> i'm sort of cheering for him because i like moderates in the senate. i know in the days you were a staffer we had a lot of moderates -- >> like you. >> yes. >> see what happened to you though. >> that's right. we kind of disappeared, but i hope that's a resurgence of moderate republicanism, but at a distance i hope we elect moderate democrats and republicans more. >> let's take a look -- >> we certainly need bipartisan in the senate and in the house. >> let's take a look at virginia right across the river here. a critical state in the presidential race. right now democrat tim kaine, the former governor leads george allen by a slim martin. this ad from the allen campaign

attempts to tie caine to president obama. >> well, i'm doing what the president wants me to do. >> so tim kaine became president obama's national party chairman, putting the president's harmful agenda first. >> and this tim kaine ad focuses on the women's vote. >> this is virginia. george allen would restrict her choices. he'd take away her constitutional rights by reversing roe v. wade. >> there you have it again. you're going to campaign down there. >> it's hard for me to make a judgment on this. if virginia could have nominated a moderate republican, that's what virginia wants to vote for but it seems both parties have nominated somebody far to the left and far to the right is the way it looks to me at a distance and i can't call it. >> you think tim kaine is on the far right? >> tim kaine is a moderate and

that's he's up two or three points and he's going to stay up. he was a moderate as a governor and i think he'll be a moderate as a senator as well and i do agree that that's what virginia is looking for. >> i do give credit for george allen just as a person coming back after his big mistake making that ethnic slur. he should have never made. he paid for it, he lost his career it looked like around then he came back. wisconsin another key state in both the presidential race and the senate power strug. le. right now democrat tammy baldwin leads the former very popular governor tommy thompson by nearly four points. the ad wars in the race have been called some of the nastiest in this cycle. first up, part of a thompson ad. let's listen to this. >> i'm tommy thompson and i approve this message. >> tammy baldwin had the opportunity to vote to honor the victims of 9/11 and she voted against it. >> there's baldwin did vote against the bill but as her campaign noted that's because it

paid tribute to the patriot act which was she something she was against. the baldwin campaign hit back with an ad of their own. let's listen. >> i'm tammy baldwin and i approve this message. >> tommy thompson's ad is a disgrace. the truth, time and again tammy baldwin has supported honoring victims of 9/11. >> you know -- >> does anybody really believe that any candidate is against the victims of september 11th? that's why that ad doesn't work. >> you think that doesn't pass the smell test. >> it doesn't pass anybody's smell test. >> upper midwest elects more liberal democrats because -- but they elect republicans as governors in their state legislatures because they look to the federal government as a source of wealth and liberal democrats have an edge in like north dakota, montana, and wisconsin as they have. my colleague, senator mcgovern, who has just passed away, my other colleague, senator daschle, but throughout the upper midwest that's where the leadership -- when there's a

tight race in the upper midwest, they will usually at the end of the day go with the liberal democrat because it's the only source of new wealth that they can draw into the state. but with their own money in the state legislature and with their governor they elect republican legislatures and governors. >> is that the old northern european social democratic thing that kicks in there, too, the swedes and the norwegians? >> north dakota it will kick in. >> no one thought tommy thompson was going to lose that race. tammy baldwin is up. i'm going to be there this weekend. i can tell you that she's got a great shot to be elected -- >> she's openly gay. i never knew that. that's a part of the race i guess. what do you think of that? >> it's great. >> it's astounding. >> i think a big reason why the democrats are going to deep the senate. >> i think that's an amazing race just to see how people are open to tolerance and diversity. i think the senate races are amazing. if the republicans pick up three seats and they win the presidency, they got the power to do reconciliation which is a clean sweep of anything they want to do. that's something democrats and republicans ought to think

about. if they get in, just three more votes in the senate they get reconciliation because they can use the vice president's tie-breaking vote and do basically anything they want on cutting taxes, cutting spending, killing obama care. thank you senator pressler and thank you, and may jor antonio villaraigosa, my friend. there's a new ebook on tv's coverage of presidential elections through the years with video going back to 1948. this is going to be great for political people to see how elections were called or miscalled, including one miscall by our own team here. this is "hardball," the place for politics. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want. where they want. doing what they want. ameriprise. the strength of a leader in retirement planning. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you one-to-one. together for your future. ♪

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we've got a great new batch of battleground state polls. here it is in ohio, a new poll from purple strategy says president obama leading mitt romney but just by two. also from ohio a new cnn poll has the president up by four, it's obama 50%, romney, 46% np in colorado the purple poll shows president obama leading by one, what does that mean? 47% to 46%. next to virginia where the purple poll puts the race dead even at 47-all. in new hampshire, which will matter, a new england college poll shows the wepresident leadg by three. one is for a clean, wedomestic energy future

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six minutes after 9:00, new york time. reporting from television headquarters. packed with men and machines set to bring you the most complete election coverage ever devised. >> wow. we're back, of course, that was a clip of nbc's coverage of the election night back in 1952, 60 years ago, just four years after the first election that was ever televised on tv. and the first year the programming took hold as a major american event. of course, americans still huddle around their tv sets on the first tuesday after the first monday in november and though the technology has changed, the story has stayeded same, a country on the edge of its seats waiting for the anchor to say who the winner is. steve writes about in his new ebook "election night" and in the enhanced edition you watch some of the election night

coverage. he's editor of tv guide magazine. congratulations on finally justifying one justifying one of these-tech books. you get to watch this great stuff and it's about tv and you get to watch it on tv, right? >> you can really ee mers yourself in every presidential cycle. the clips are from the nbc archives and show coverage of the election night and you can see the important moments that led up to those nights. and you need a nook or an i book from apple. but you can see the pictures that we dug up just in the kindle version. you can enjoy it both ways. but if you want enjoy it, you have to have a nook or e book. >> david brinkley called it for

john f. kennedy as coverage continued into the morning and declared kennedy the next president. let's watch how they got it right by getting it wrong. >> at 7:19 a.m. eastern time, senator kennedy was elected president of the united states. nbc victory desk has just given california to kennedy and that gives him the election. >> well, there they are, steve. they were right overall but wrong about the state? >> nbc called the election for kennedy hours before anybody else and he had been running way ahead all night. what happened was, it was 7:00 and managers at nbc -- somebody, nobody knows quite who -- they said, you guys have got to call this thing. so california was very close, about a 100,000 vote difference.

but when the absentee ballots came in and they were counted, nixon won that state. it didn't affect the outcome of the election but it was the wrong call for the state. >> nixon carried it by 33,000. florida, florida, florida, tim russert is here with tim brokaw in the year 2000 in the murky election night. let's watch. >> 565 votes. >> and there are some votes -- >> that's not even a wide spot on the road. >> and there are some votes that have not been counted. >> and there are still some votes to be counted. what if this goes the other way? >> it's only 3:17. we're here. cameras are hot.

>> that's entirely possible. we've got -- tim gets his board out. >> isn't it funny, steve, that at the very time in night when you had to be the most acute in your thinking, you get punchy out there. these guys have been broadcasting for nine hours at this point. >> it wasn't just that, they didn't know what was going on. all of the networks share -- they pool the information that's gathered across the country for the vote. they are all getting the same data. they hire their own people to make a judgment on whether there is a call or not and they all got the same bad information. there was a lot of confusion on the ground and i should point out from this point -- from that point forward, the networks have been extremely cautious about calling these races. i don't think you'll see a mistake like that again. four years later when once george bush got up to 269 electoral votes after awarded ohio by a couple of networks, they stopped. they did not call the race

because there was a possibility that john kerry might challenge it. caution has prevailed ever since. >> let's look at the red states and blue states back when nbc created it. here is david brokaw and david brinkley using it in the ronald reagan sweep. the republicans designated color at that time was dominant. let's listen. >> we're going to call another state for ronald reagan. not surprisingly, it's a big one. california. 45 electoral votes. ronald reagan picks up his home state of california. he's never lost a race there. and we fill in that big chunk of the map once again with blue. now solid blue practically all the way from the mississippi river westerly. >> it's getting to look like a suburban swimming pool there. >> steve, i love that stuff. tell me about something i did not know until i got your book today. why did democrats get stuck with blue? blue is a pretty good color. back in the cold war i wouldn't

want to be the red state if you were a democrat. >> that could have been one reason it changed. the electoral map was created at nbc in 1976 by john chancellor, an exec be tif named gordon manning. they wanted to make it more visual and make it not just about the numbers. when they picked the colors, they wanted to go by the rosettes that the british party used and so they went red for the democrats making it sync up with the labor party and blue for republicans. when the other networks basically imitated the map and did maps of their own, they changed it. >> okay. >> so you were seeing a new consistency across the networks. it was finally made consistent in 1996. red for republicans, blue for democrats. >> okay. got to go. steve, great book. election night, it's called "election night, television history." i don't think you cannot buy this if you're a true junkie

like me. we'll be right back. [ horn honks ]

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